


It's Alright

by Yatzstar



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Force Bond, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, fight/make up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21932308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzstar/pseuds/Yatzstar
Summary: Rey and Kylo experience the loss of General Organa.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	It's Alright

**Author's Note:**

> I think I wrote this in early 2018?? I can't remember, I know it was right after TLJ released. I wasn't happy with the result at the time and I forgot about it for a year or two, but with recent events I figured I'd dust it off and add some finishing touches to finally post. At any rate, here is a post-TLJ look at Leia's death.

Kylo Ren felt it like a punch to the gut—an awful scream that surged through the Force, a cry of pure anger and despair that resonated with all the primal fury of a gamma-ray burst. He knew immediately its owner, and what the cause of such a response was.

She was gone. She, who had birthed him and loved him through both their many failures, loved him even through Han’s death, was gone.

The Supreme Leader turned, ignoring Hux’s questioning remark, and retreated swiftly to his chambers. She was the enemy. He should be glad that such an influential figure in the Resistance was gone, crippling their moral and bringing them one step closer to crushing defeat.

But he felt only emptiness. Like a vital part of him had been taken with her.

Both his parents were now gone, and he had sensed Skywalker’s ascension into the Force several months past. The three who had brought the Galactic Empire crashing down, all dead.

He was alone.

No, he realized, after a heartbeat of overwhelming despair threatened to crush him under its weight. There was another.

As though the thought of her had ignited the event, Ren suddenly found himself somewhere else. Under normal circumstances, the room would have been quite ordinary—clearly a temporary abode, made for one occupant only. Now however, the sparse furniture was upended and flung haphazardly about as though a tornado had struck. And there, crouched in the corner with her head buried in her knees, was a familiar figure.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?”

The scavenger’s head jerked up at the sound of his voice. Her face was a mess, puffy-eyed and tearstained, made only worse as her features twisted in a snarl. She flung a pillow at Ren’s face, but the object passed right through him.

“Go away!” Rey screamed angrily. “You are the last person in the galaxy I want to see! Get out of my room!”

Several more objects were flung Kylo’s way, but all phased harmlessly through him. Rey staggered to her feet then, gripping the overturned cot for support, trembling with rage.

“If you’ve come here to gloat, get on with it,” she hissed at him, her voice hoarse from exertion. “I’m sure you and your flunkies will be celebrating once the news gets out. That pompous ginger idiot you keep around will be positively giddy when he hears.”

She wasn’t wrong on that front, Ren admitted to himself.

“Whatever happened to the Rey who knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I could be changed?” he asked then, the calmness of his voice only serving to make the woman before him angrier. “What happened to make you think that I would not grieve for her death?”

“ _You_ happened,” Rey shot back, furious that the loss of his own mother seemed to bounce right off him. “Your First Order has taken everything from me. You hurt my friends, you hurt me, you—you killed Han Solo, and now you’ve taken Lei—General Organa as well. What else will you snatch away?”

She shook her head scornfully at him without waiting for a response. “I don't know why I'm surprised—she was only your mother, and given how you treated your father, I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything less.”

Ren stepped forward at this remark, fists clenching, his lip drawing back slightly over his teeth. “I could have killed you on Takodana, scavenger,” he snarled, anger erasing all rationale. “I’m beginning to regret letting you live.”

“Oh, is that so?” Rey tilted her head, a thin, disparaging smile crossing her lips. “And I could have killed you on Starkiller Base. I didn’t though, because I knew that losing both husband and son in the same stroke would break Leia’s heart. I cared about her enough to do that—though I guess you can’t say the same, can you?”

“At least I had parents that loved me,” Ren retorted, his temper rising by the second. “My parents didn’t sell me to the highest bidder, then leave to die a drunken death without so much as a final goodbye.”

That did it. With a scream of rage, Rey charged. Ren, expecting her to pass harmlessly through, was unprepared as she slammed into him, knocking the man flat on his back and landing on his chest, driving the wind from him.

“Your parents loved you!” she shouted at him, seizing the front of his tunic and hauling his startled face up to meet hers. “They loved you more than life itself, and how did you repay them for it? By stabbing one through the heart, and relentlessly chasing the other down until her death as well! You’re a monster! An utter monster!”

With the element of surprise gone, Kylo exerted his greater strength and size over the scavenger. Before Rey could even register that he had seized her shoulders, the tables were turned and she found the floor pressed solidly beneath her back, her wrists pinned on either side of her head by black-gloved hands.

“You still know nothing, don’t you?” Ren snarled, his hair hanging wildly about his face. “It killed me inside to do what I did to Han. But I had no choice—Snoke watched my every move. If I failed, run and hide as I may, he would come for me. You have already experienced what happened to those who displease him—it would be a hundred times worse for me, his apprentice, who should have known better.”

Rey stared up into Ren’s furious gaze. It carried burning anger, but also overwhelming grief. His eyes were not those of a Supreme Leader—rather, they were the eyes of a scared little boy named Ben, a boy who had just lost his mother and was trying desperately not to break under the strain.

“You pathetic creature,” she said softly, “What kind of life have you known?”

Ben’s jaw clenched, but he could not stop the tears before they fell, dampening Rey’s cheeks where they hit.

“I—I don’t know what to do,” he choked out, his chest heaving with labored breaths as he struggled to contain his emotions. “It hurts so much!”

A wave of pity washed over Rey, her anger melting in her chest. She couldn’t stay mad at him, not like this.

“Snoke is dead,” she reminded him gently. “You don’t have to hide anymore. It’s alright.”

Ben tried to speak, but his words caught in his throat. Instead he leaned down, resting his brow on Rey’s chest, and wept.

Over twenty years of bottled-up emotions finally broke free from Ben in deep, gut-wrenching sobs that sounded almost painful as they tore forth. He gripped Rey as though she were a lifeline keeping him from drowning, the scavenger unable to suppress her own tears of grief and compassion. They wept together there on the floor, for each other and for their loss. For those few brief moments, they were not enemies on opposite sides of a war—instead they were two broken people who had lost so much, each leaning on the other for support amidst their crumbling worlds.

* * *

“Rey? Are you holding up alright?”

Finn cracked the door to his friend’s room, unsurprised at the scattered furniture—her earlier outburst had caused the lights to flicker throughout the entire base, and dropped the air pressure so sharply that the ears of those nearby had popped on the spot.

Rey sat slumped in the corner, her face encrusted with dried tears, apparently having cried herself to sleep. What Finn’s eyes could not see though as he quietly shut the door, was the dark-haired man who lay beside her, his head pillowed on her breast. Their arms were wrapped around one another, as though they could keep each other from falling to pieces.

They were far from friends.

But they were not quite enemies either.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Wow its totally Christmas tomorrow. Merry Christmas!


End file.
